The Only Girl in Apex

Fear

Kaia's POV

“Are you deaf and dumb too?” golden eyes snapped at me impatiently, and his very harsh voice finally pulled me out of my thoughts.

I blinked at him for a second, realizing I had been staring at him without answering while my mind ran in circles trying to process everything happening around me. My heart was beating painfully hard against my chest, and every instinct inside me was screaming that something about this place was wrong, but I forced myself not to show any of it on my face. Fear was dangerous. I had learned that lesson early in life. The moment people noticed fear, they used it against you, and right now I was alone in the middle of nowhere with some strange guy who looked at me like he already hated my existence.

I straightened my shoulders slightly and forced my expression to stay calm even though my hands were trembling around the strap of my bag. “Yes,” I answered finally. “I’m a girl.”

The words felt strange coming out of my mouth so openly because I had spent years avoiding them, hiding them, and pretending they didn’t belong to me at all. Before he could respond, I quickly added, “Are you the one sent to welcome me?”

For a second he just stared at me like I had completely lost my mind. His face looked almost offended by the question itself, and under the moonlight his golden eyes somehow looked even stranger. They were too bright and too intense, and the way he looked at me made me feel exposed in a way I hated.

Slowly, he tilted his head before asking, “Do you even know where you are?”

“Apex,” I replied quietly.

He scoffed immediately after hearing that, dragging one hand down his face like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So you know where you are,” he said coldly, “and you’re still standing here?” Then his expression darkened even more as he looked me up and down again. “I don’t care where you came from, little lamb, but you need to get lost. Girls aren’t allowed here.”

My stomach twisted tightly at his words, but I forced myself not to look behind me toward the empty road. There was nothing there for me anyway, no home waiting for me. My father had made sure of that the second he dumped me here and drove away like I meant absolutely nothing. Wandering off into the darkness wasn’t an option, and even if it was, I didn’t know where I would go. I had nowhere else left.

So instead of backing away, I tightened my grip on my bag and looked directly at him. “My father brought me here,” I replied. “And seeing how you’re standing outside at this time of the night, I’m guessing you’re the one who was supposed to pick me up from the gate?” He stayed silent, so I continued before my courage disappeared completely. “How about you get over the shock of seeing a girl for the first time in your life and just move aside and let me in?”

For a moment there was complete silence between us. Then suddenly he started laughing, and the sound immediately sent chills down my spine. It wasn’t normal laughter. It sounded dark and rough and wrong somehow, like he found something deeply amusing that I couldn’t understand. As he laughed, I noticed something strange immediately. His golden eyes seemed brighter somehow, more intense under the light around us, and it made my chest tighten nervously. Every instinct inside me was telling me to run even though I had nowhere to run to.

Then just as abruptly as the laughter started, it stopped.

His face became calm again, but now there was a smile on his lips that somehow felt worse than the anger from before. Slowly, he stepped aside and gestured toward the open gates behind him. “Once you step through these gates,” he said calmly, “forget about ever being a girl.”

The way he said it made coldness spread through me despite my effort to stay calm. There was something deeply unsettling about him, something I couldn’t explain no matter how hard I tried. Still, I swallowed my discomfort and forced myself to answer.

“I never was one anyway,” I muttered quietly.

For a second he stared at me carefully, like he was trying to decide whether I was serious or not. Then without another word, he stepped aside completely, giving me enough room to walk through the gates. My legs felt heavy as I moved forward, but I forced myself not to hesitate, and the second I crossed through the gates, he followed behind me and pulled them shut with a loud sound that echoed through the night. The noise made my stomach drop because it sounded final, like something closing behind me forever.

Without saying another word, he turned and started walking ahead, and I quickly adjusted my bag and hurried after him, trying my best to keep up as he moved through the dark campus like he knew every inch of it by memory.

The place was bigger than I expected, with large buildings that stood in the distance with only a few lights coming through windows here and there, and the deeper we walked inside, the more isolated everything felt.

The guy walked fast, way too fast, and after a while I found myself nearly jogging just to keep up with him. He never looked back once to check if I was following, and it was almost like he expected me to either keep up or get left behind. My body was already exhausted from the long drive and the stress of everything happening, but I pushed through it anyway because falling behind felt dangerous somehow.

I kept staring at the back of his hoodie, trying to figure him out, but there was something unreadable about him that made me uneasy. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, he stopped walking so abruptly that I nearly crashed into him.

He turned around slowly and looked directly at me again. “What’s your name?” he asked.

The sudden question confused me. He had ignored me almost the entire walk, and now suddenly he cared about my name? Still, after a short hesitation, I answered carefully. “Kaia.”

I purposely left out my last name. My father’s name was powerful but also a double edged sword, and I didn’t trust anyone here enough to reveal it yet.

A slow smile spread across his face again, and this time it looked even creepier than before. “Welcome to Apex, Kaia.”

Before I could even react properly, something dark suddenly dropped over my head, a cloth, and panic hit me instantly as darkness covered my eyes completely. My breath caught in my throat, and I immediately tried to pull away, but before I could even scream properly, something slammed painfully against the back of my head and neck.

Pain shot through my body so fast that my knees nearly gave out immediately. The world around me spun violently, and suddenly I couldn’t feel my legs properly anymore. I tried to fight it, tried to move, and tried to scream, but my body stopped listening to me almost instantly.

The last thing I remembered before blacking out completely was the feeling of strong hands catching me as my body went limp. Then everything disappeared into darkness.

When I slowly regained consciousness again, my entire body felt heavy and sore. My head throbbed painfully, especially near my neck, and for a few seconds I couldn’t even remember where I was. Everything around me felt blurry and distant, but as I slowly became more aware, fear immediately rushed through me.

I tried to move my hands, but they wouldn’t move. My heart jumped violently as I realized both my wrists were tied behind my back. My ankles were tied too, and I was lying on a cold hard floor that made my entire body ache. Fear hit me so hard that it almost made me nauseous, and I forced my eyes open properly.

Four guys were standing in front of me. One of them was golden eyes from earlier, while the other three were strangers.

Immediately, my breathing became uneven as I looked between them, trying to understand what was happening. One guy leaned lazily against a table with his arms crossed while another stood quietly near the wall watching me with obvious curiosity, but the one standing in the middle instantly pulled all my attention toward him.

At first his back was turned toward me, and he was tall with incredibly broad shoulders. There was something about the way he carried himself that made the entire room feel tense. Even without seeing his face yet, I somehow knew he was the kind of person people feared naturally.

Then golden eyes spoke. “She’s awake.”

The guy in the middle slowly turned around, and the second I saw his face, my breath caught painfully in my throat.

I had never seen anyone so good-looking in my life before. Everything about him looked perfect in a way that almost didn’t feel real, but somehow that only made him more terrifying. There was absolutely nothing warm about him, and the moment his eyes landed on me, cold shivers crawled down my spine so hard that I froze completely.

He looked dangerous and not a normal kind of dangerous or like the boys I grew up around who acted tough just to impress people.

This felt completely different, the kind of dangerous that made your body react before your brain even understood why, the kind that felt capable of violence without effort, and the kind that could probably kill someone and sleep peacefully afterward.

Slowly, he started walking toward me while the others stayed behind him. By the time he finally stopped in front of me, my heart was beating so hard I thought they could probably hear it. Then he crouched down slowly until we were nearly eye level.

Up close he looked even more intimidating. His gaze moved over my face carefully before he suddenly reached forward and grabbed my chin lightly, forcing my head upward so he could look at me properly. I stiffened immediately at the contact, but fear rooted me in place too completely to pull away.

A calm smile slowly appeared on his face. “I can’t believe there’s actually a girl in Apex,” he said softly, his voice surprisingly calm compared to what I expected. Then his eyes moved over my face again before he added with a mocking smirk, “A pretty one too.”

My throat tightened immediately, and despite trying not to show fear, I gulped hard.